


The Boxer

by Argyle



Category: Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-26
Updated: 2007-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 21:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five good things about Dickie Greenleaf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boxer

Dickie is reckless. He fucks Peter by the Palazzo Farnese. They’re out of the way of the thoroughfare, but only just so; Peter glances over his shoulder often. He hates the grime which permeates the alley, the grit creeping up his fingernails as he braces himself against the wall, and he longs to push away. But then they begin to develop a rhythm. A groan coils in his throat, and it takes everything he has not to lose himself in the glare of Dickie’s attention.

And Dickie? He’s never not himself. He pants and swears, his teeth rough on Peter’s shoulder as he dislodges Peter’s shirt from his trousers and traces a path up Peter’s spine. His eyes are bloodshot, halfway closed.

Peter palms himself, then finds his hand batted away, and Dickie’s working his way past Peter’s buttons. His fingers are quick enough. Peter comes in Dickie’s palm, only dimly aware of the sound as Dickie grunts his release soon thereafter.

They’re both bloody pissed, and what’s more, Peter lets this slide as his excuse. He tells himself he would never permit such a liberty, such a mad errand, if he were sober. But he also knows he’d be more the fool if he claimed it wasn’t what he wanted.

Dickie’s had more than Peter.

It’s in the way Dickie carries himself: self-assured and satisfied. Of course, Peter first heard him -- not to be confused with having heard _of_ him, which happened long prior to Dickie’s arrival in Rome -- before he saw him. Peter was late coming out of a rehearsal at the Trinità dei Monti, his fingers pattering against his thigh as though still working the organ keys, and he found himself surrounded by Dickie’s entourage of expats as they gavotted past the Barcaccia, oblivious to the hour or the ire of the locals.

There were three bottles of wine for every person present, all pilfered from the finest cellars in the city, as well as some from several cities over. It was this haphazard mixture, Dickie later assured Peter, which caused him to hop onto the fountain and break into a light and easy jazz number. His sense of timing was off. 

Dickie called it syncopation. How Peter had smiled at this, the following day, after Dickie introduced him to Max Rhodes and Freddie Miles.

“But you probably know Freddie already, don’t you?” Dickie had drawled, and Peter was forced to admit that he did. Freddie smiled ever so dangerously and sipped his espresso.

Dickie smiled too, though a little more hazily, a little more kindly. He was hung over, and the flesh around his eyes was taut and sallow. Looking curiously vulnerable, he swallowed his coffee down and said, “Everybody knows Freddie.”

Peter shrugged, unwilling to commit. “How do you find Rome?”

“Well,” Dickie had replied, “some take the train. _I_ got a ride in Freddie’s car. Fucking bruiser blew a tire outside Mongi, and it took _four hours_ for the repairman to arrive on the scene. Worse than the police department, I tell you. What if we’d been injured? Of course, had Marge come along, I’m sure she would’ve found a way to defend them.”

“Where _is_ Marge, anyway?” Freddie asked.

“Don’t be a bastard,” Dickie shot back lazily. “I’ve told you.”

“And _I’ve_ forgotten.”

Dickie took a deep breath. Then he said, looking directly at Peter, “She’s in Paris with her agent. She’s writing a book.” He quirked a grin. “Funny thing is, I never read anything longer than a wine list. What do you think, Peter? Match made in heaven, or what?”

Peter allowed himself the luxury of a laugh. He felt Dickie’s eyes on him even as he turned to glance down the street. It was not an unpleasant sensation. “Perhaps her protagonist will develop an interest Armagnac.”

“Armagnac?” Freddie scoffed, and gestured to the waiter for his bill. “In that case, I hope the police department in Paris is better than the one here.”

“I suppose every country has its weak points,” Peter said, softly.

“Weak points!” Dickie laughed and drove his elbow into Freddie’s ribcage. And then, wonderingly, “Weak points. I like this guy.”

Freddie’s smile widened, his gaze sly and appraising. “I told you he was worth keeping around.”

“And what’s keeping _you_ around here, Peter?” Dickie asked.

“Oh, nothing, really. Well. I’ve a concert next month.”

“Musician?”

“Of a sort.” It wasn’t that Peter did not want to tell Dickie the whole truth, but rather that he had guessed at the potential for Dickie’s cruelty. Matched with Freddie’s dry creek bed chuckle, it would be nearly unbearable to go on: music was his livelihood as well as his lifeblood, and talk of livelihood invariably led to talk of income, which in turn would come to expose the reality of his bright but threadbare Venetian digs.

Peter had long ago come to recognize the scent of earthquake weather.

Dickie held his eye for a moment longer. “Yeah?” he asked. “Must be something in the water.”

Now, in the alleyway, Peter offers him his handkerchief. Dickie takes it, laughs, then drops it to the soiled ground. It’s one o’clock on Tuesday morning; the hour is marked by a jazz club’s dizzy thrum rather than the peal of a steeple bell.

Peter worries he’ll lose Dickie in the crowd, but then sees him jump up on the stage, his hat perched on his head at a rakish angle. Sweat beads in his hair; his eyes do not so much catch the footlights as absorb them. The band staggers through a Duke Ellington tune, and then another, slower number Peter can’t place.

An hour or more passes before they’re again standing together in the thrall. Peter’s on his third martini, and he says matter-of-factly, “You’re not bad.”

“Ha!” Dickie places a hand on Peter’s shoulder, but its warmth is no different than the warmth which saturates every corner of the club. Only the weight remains. With a click of his tongue, he plucks the olive from Peter’s glass, raises the tiny skewer as with a salute, and proceeds to munch it down. “You know what I’d really like?”

Peter smiles conspiratorially. “What would you really like?”

For several long moments, Dickie doesn’t respond. Then Peter follows his gaze to a girl by the bar. She crosses her legs, meeting his eye.

Dickie sidesteps Peter and sashays across the room. It’s nearly four by the time Peter makes it back to his hotel; he is only grateful his cab does not suffer a puncture.

Before all that, before they even left the café on that first morning, Dickie had said, “I want to see Rome,” his cigarette hanging jauntily from his lips. “But not as a tourist. I don’t give a fuck that Caesar So-and-So took a shit at Such-and-Such Junction two thousand years ago. Take me to the places that really matter.”

Peter walked him to the Protestant Cemetery, showed him Shelley’s grave. Dickie’s disinterested nod betrayed Peter’s folly: speaking quite distinctly, as though for the benefit of his fellow sightseers, Dickie asked where he might take a piss. They found a record shop, where yes, Dickie located the toilet, and then proceeded to charm a shopgirl into a tour of the backroom. Peter listened to Glenn Gould in a booth for three hours. The music flickered through his veins, pooled in his guts with the richness of honey; he did not feel alone.

Dickie met him on the kerb, the scent of sweat and perfume heavy on his clothes. He’d chuckled indulgently, like it was the most common thing in the world, and it was. Peter lit two cigarettes. They walked through the twilight together, looking for local cuisine, but ended up back at the restaurant in Dickie’s hotel.

\----

Dickie has expensive tastes.

The next day, Peter has to work, and is away from his hotel until sundown. When he stops at the front desk for his key, he half expects Dickie to swing round the corner to whisk him away for another night on the town; but then again, no. The deskman assures him Dickie hadn’t come knocking.

Peter doesn’t fool himself into thinking it’s love, but when the blue fluorescents catch in Dickie’s golden hair and Peter feels that telltale ache in his chest, he supposes it’s close enough.

He also knows the last thing Dickie wants to experience is the inside of another hotel room, let alone another hotel bed with stuffy hotel sheets and the glare of stale hotel light come morning. The following night, they’re back at the club, and Peter’s head is throbbing from watered whiskey and the roar of dueling trumpets.

Dickie’s laughing like a madman, reeling like a drunkard. Peter supposes this summation is not far off, but then he can’t stand by while a young Roman takes Dickie by the shoulders and another plants a fist in Dickie’s side. The girl Dickie had been wooing has gone, replaced by more and yet more of her fiancé’s brothers-in-arms.

There is a lull in the music before the band breaks into a chaotic improvisation.

Dickie takes a hit on his jaw, another on his cheek, and all the while he’s calling out, goading them, then treating all who come near with his best left-hook. Peter had been told -- or perhaps it was only something he overheard -- that Dickie boxed for Princeton, Varsity letter and all. Seeing him now, Peter almost believes it. Dickie grins like a lion.

And then Peter’s embroiled in the mess. It’s against his better judgement, and he almost slips on the sticky dance floor, but soon he’s pulling a man off Dickie’s back. Dickie’s lower lip is bleeding; Peter only worries after the safety of his own hands as an afterthought. He hasn’t been in a fight since Harrow.

“ _Mi dispiace_ ,” he says in an unfamiliar voice as the Roman staggers back, though Peter’s the one who takes a hit.

“How dare you! How dare you,” Dickie chants with shallow breath, and wipes the back of his hand against his mouth. “My father paid top dollar for these.” He glances at Peter. “On Park Avenue, pearly whites don’t go cheaper than a hundred bucks a pop.”

“Dickie!” Struggling to be heard over the music, Peter ignores Dickie’s comment. His throat aches. “Dickie, let’s go.”

“Uh-uh. No way,” says Dickie. Then he spits a mouthful of blood on the ground.

Dickie keeps swinging, even when he’s down.

Peter has to drag him from the dance floor, and Dickie stamps angrily all the way between the bar and the lavatory. The walls are filthy, the tiles worse, but the latch on the door is sturdy enough, and the water comes out clear from the tap.

“Here.” Peter wrenches the handkerchief from his pocket, wets it, and proceeds to dab it across the gash on Dickie’s brow. Dickie begins to push him away, but then Peter says, “Let me.”

“Ah!” Dickie pulls back, only to land against the porcelain sink with a dull thud. “ _Fuck_. You didn’t have to do that back there, you know. I could’ve taken ’em, fascist pansies.”

“That’s just the gin speaking,” Peter says, though he’s not sure it’s the truth. Something in Dickie’s eyes, colorless as they are in the fickle yellow light, suggests pure primal energy and the love of the chase. He rinses blood from the handkerchief and dashes it along Dickie’s jaw line. “It’s a wonder, but I think you’ll escape without sutures.”

“More than can be said about Marco back there.”

“You know him?”

Dickie points to a scar below his left ear. The surrounding flesh is tinged pink, though the wound itself appears to have healed some weeks ago. Peter is uncertain of how he might have missed seeing it before. “You should have learned your lesson,” he says, softly.

“I only need to know where the back door is.”

“And then what?” Peter pauses to wring out the handkerchief. “If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself banished from the country.”

“They’ll have to drag me out by my toenails.”

“Make all the papers, eh?”

“My father’d _love_ that,” Dickie says, his eyes suddenly hard. Then he hisses as Peter smoothes a damp streak across his cheek. “I can see it now, the headline greeting him as he drinks his coffee. He’ll call my mother in, threaten to have me shackled up at our place in the Hamptons for good.” He shrugs as though bored with his own jest. “Anyway, I’m sure he’d be glad enough to know I’m keeping the cops off their asses.”

“I’m sure.”

“Just to see his face...”

Peter laughs shortly. The handkerchief is ruined; he balls it and tosses it in the bin. “You should see yours. That bruise on your eye doesn’t exactly present the most fetching visage. Had it landed an inch upwards, you wouldn’t even recognize yourself in the mirror.”

“Another reason it’s better Marge isn’t here.”

“You love her.”

Dickie nods, then winces and presses the heel of his hand against his temple. “She’d pick up where Marco left off,” he says, idly. “But only because she knows my secret.”

Peter arches a brow. “What’s that?”

“I’m immortal.”

“And would you be willing to divulge the source of your good fortune?”

Dickie grins crookedly. “For a price,” he says, and leans forward. He doesn’t kiss Peter so much as allow Peter to kiss him, bending into it with the fervor of a man who hates to keep outstanding debts for long. The taste of Dickie’s mouth is tinged with copper, sanguine and salty.

Peter wonders how Dickie sees him, whether he thinks Peter’s good enough to join the ranks of his menagerie even as he lacks the plumes and claws of Dickie’s other friends.

No. He’s but a whim, and he knows it.

But then Peter is on his knees and Dickie’s cock is in his mouth. Dickie’s breathing has grown no more haggard than when Peter dragged him out of the brawl; only Peter has changed. Dickie’s hands are in his hair. A profane litany, so similar to the one he expresses with his saxophone, ekes out of him. He comes with a ragged sigh, and Peter has to pull back before he chokes.

Nearly an hour passes before the police arrive.

From their vantage point across the square, they watch the squadron of uniformed men pour into the club. Peter tells Dickie he won’t be available the next few days: rehearsal for the concert has reached a fever pitch, and it will take a miracle for all the quirks to be solved in time.

“ _Rehearsal_ ,” Dickie sneers. “That’s no way to experience music. No way to play it, either. It’s got to come from here.” He pats his chest. “Organic, like puking your guts out after a late night in Acapulco. You can’t know what’s going to happen. You might guess, but you can’t know.”

Peter shrugs. It’s an old argument, one which he never found entirely convincing. “You’re welcome to come round and listen,” he murmurs. “If only to prove yourself right.”

“Sure.” Here Dickie’s eyes narrow into slits. He becomes visibly, though coolly agitated, like a penned leopard at the zoo. He runs a hand through his hair, then asks, a trifle warily, “What happened to my hat?”

Peter feels the color rise in his face. He cannot be disappointed. He’s seen it before, and Dickie has never been someone to plan a life around. “I suppose you left it inside.”

“Figures. You know, I never used to have trouble keeping track of my things.”

They return to their hotels in separate cabs. It’s easier that way, Peter thinks: neither has to wait on account of the other.

\----

The next time Peter sees him, Dickie’s buying three dozen oranges from a fruit stand by the Tiber. Peter shoves his folio beneath his arm and helps carry one of the heavy paper sacks to Freddie’s car. To Peter’s great relief, Freddie himself is nowhere to be found.

“Who knows when he’ll be back,” Dickie grumbles and draws heavily on his cigarette, scattering ash in the noontime breeze. “He can’t be trusted.”

Peter smiles noncommittally and gestures towards the oranges. “What’s the occasion?”

“Doctor Abbrusio says I need vitamin C.”

“What?”

“That’s what I said.” Dickie kicks the tire and then swings round to lean heavily on the boot. “More quack than doctor, if you ask me. Next he’ll try to sell me on leeches.”

Peter feels a flush of concern, but keeps his voice steady. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know anything beyond the fact that I was camped out by the toilet bowl for the past four days. Probably just some bad dates or something.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Dickie says, meeting Peter’s eye for the first time. “Want to go somewhere?”

Peter hesitates for a moment. It occurs to him that Dickie doesn’t look like a man who’s recently suffered an illness. Indeed, although his tanned brow is dotted with sweat, he appears both vibrant and eager. Then Dickie treats him to a deliberate smile, and Peter knows with sudden clarity that the validity of Dickie’s claim is as unimportant as the hour.

“I’m not catching,” Dickie coaxes, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It isn’t.”

“Well?”

“You have a key?”

Dickie pulls a rabbit’s foot keyring from his pocket. “Filched it from him last summer.”

“Always thinking ahead,” Peter muses, sliding into the passenger seat.

Dickie hops in beside him, turns the key in the ignition, and stares at the steering wheel for several moments. He flicks his cigarette onto the pavement; the engine purrs. “I can’t drive,” he says, though without difficulty. It is more as though for Dickie, driving has always been something that happened to other people. He looks at Peter and begins to laugh.

There is something slightly perverse, Peter reflects as they set off towards the west, about driving Freddie’s car. It’s a flashy number, and fast. He takes what he can.

“How was the concert?” Dickie asks eventually. With the roar of the city behind him, his tone seems less erratic, though perhaps it is only a trick of the open sky acoustics. He begins to peel an orange; bright scraps of rind dot the motorway in their wake.

Peter stifles a sigh. “It’s on Saturday.”

“And today’s what? Tuesday?”

“Thursday.”

“I tell you, Peter! That’s the trouble with putting things of questionable origin in your mouth, if you know what I mean. Fuck -- just think of what I missed when I was out of commission!”

“I imagine your acquaintances were sorry for your absence.”

Dickie nods. “They were. Sure they were.”

And then they are watching the sunset together, Dickie’s hand snaking towards the small of Peter’s back as they lean against the car. The air is crisp and clear, the sky orange and streaked with contrails; Peter breathes deeply. He suddenly feels as though he’d not seen the world before Dickie, and wonders whether it’s better than never having seen it at all.

He does not wish to appear ungrateful. He cannot feign indifference.

It does not go unnoticed that Dickie seldom asks after his happiness, or inquires about his upbringing, and nor is Peter wont to volunteer this information. But then again, Dickie had sized him up the moment they met eyes on that night beside the fountain. Dickie knew Peter’s story before he knew his name.

They return to Rome early. After Peter parks the car, Dickie tugs his jacket about him and says, quite simply, “ _Ciao_.”

\----

Peter is loath to pay for another cab back to his hotel, but his feet ache, and the darkness has brought with it an unseasonable chill. He changes into his pyjamas and attempts to study his score; failing that, he turns in early. On the street below his window, a group of young paramours mangle Cole Porter:

“As Abelard said to Eloise,” a drunken tenor croons, “‘Don’t forget to drop a line to me, please.’”

Peter sleeps fitfully. His mouth tastes of oranges.

\----

They meet again in the café on Sunday morning. Checking his watch, Dickie spills coffee on this shirtfront, and he curses impressively as he accepts Peter’s handkerchief. “I don’t want to make a habit out of this,” he says, not looking up.

“It’s fine,” Peter murmurs around the lip of his cup. The espresso scalds his tongue, but scarcely warms his belly. The reception following the concert had lasted far into the night, and it was only as an afterthought -- however deliberate -- that he accepted Dickie’s last minute invitation to sup.

“It is, isn’t it.” Dickie bends the question into a statement, and his voice drips with cheerful disdain as he continues, “So how’d your Boccherini go?”

“Bach, actually. It went well.”

“Good. Sorry I didn’t show. The whole thing clear slipped my mind, and besides: I don’t think Freddie’ll ever let me near his car again. For all his fuss, you’d think I’d totaled it. I even tried to explain to him _I_ wasn’t the one who did the driving. He can be such a _bore_.”

“It’s fine,” Peter says again, and it is.

Dickie forgets easily.

Two weeks later, he’s back in Mongibello. He says he has business to attend to, and Peter can’t say he isn’t glad to find they at least have one thing in common.


End file.
